A message circulated among the most important ministers and officials of the Government. It was on Monday the 13th in the morning, a few hours after the presidential debate between Sergio Massa and Javier Milei. The idea was very clear. “From the campaign command they ask us to please, starting tomorrow and until after the election, the indication is not to make anything public, to take care of each decision and resolution in detail, not to hold meetings with provincial or municipal governments, and to adjust to the entire line and to the decentralized organizations, please. Nor should you make statements in the media or on private or institutional networks that may have political implications. We are in the last week and that tells us that whoever makes mistakes loses, and clearly those of us who are doing things are more at risk than those who only talk. Therefore, we ask you to lower the exposure of the Government and especially the cabinet to zero. Thank you very much for your attention and patience.”
Although there were several recipients, everyone in the ruling party knows that there are two people who could cause the most damage if they disobey the order. One is Cristina Kirchner, who is already showing signs of an eventual political retirement. And another is Alberto Fernández, the incumbent president who is hardly seen. The president’s last month in Quinta de Olivos promises to be like this: in total ostracism.
Yesterday and today. Alberto faces the entrance of the Argentine Catholic University, in Puerto Madero. Around the brown brick entrance there is a crowd of people, including journalists, militants and the security itself. Everyone jumps on him as soon as they see him get out of his car. The man, in a gray jacket and white shirt, has to push to enter. Inside he greets the poll workers, grabs his ballot, votes, smiles for the cameras and goes out to talk to the press. “I am very happy,” he will repeat on that day, over and over again. It is August 11, 2019 and Fernández is hours away from winning the primary elections, which a few months later will consecrate him as president. What may be the great nightmare of his life is, on that sunny Sunday, about to begin. But the man still doesn’t know it.
Since then more than four years have passed. Now it is Sunday, again, but October 22, 2023. His government is repudiated even by his own, and his figure is something similar to a kryptonite but for Peronism. The last months before the elections were spent locked up in Olivos – he barely visits the Casa Rosada -, from where he contributed as much as he could to Massa’s campaign. He spent the phone talking to governors and mayors, reminding them of the support – including financial – that the national government provided in recent years, asking them – sometimes almost demanding – that they redouble their efforts in their localities in order to supervise the runoff. “And Alberto, doing that, has fun. It’s what works best for him, until he almost forgets that he is the President and goes back to his time as Néstor’s operator, which was the best side of him,” says a man walking along Fifth.
However, all that effort, everything he did to ensure that the ruling party did not break during these years, Alberto thinks, went unnoticed. At least that’s how it seems when he comes to vote, in the election in which Massa will make a surprising comeback. Now, on the outskirts of the UCA, there is almost no one. In fact, there are more journalists than curious or sympathizers. His communications team puts a microphone in the street so he can speak after voting. The cameras show Fernández alone. There is no one behind him. A postcard from the last stretch of his presidency.
Future. What will Alberto do starting December 10? Among his friends there is no unanimous position. Some maintain that he will return to the idea that he had before Cristina offered him the position, that of going to live in Spain and return to the academic field of Law. Others assure that he intends to anchor himself in Latin America, taking advantage of the good friends he made in some countries in the region and especially with the Puebla Group. It is true that Fernández has been moving along this international line in recent weeks. Not only because of the trip he made to China, but because in the final stretch of the campaign he took advantage of his international ties to extract statements in favor from Pedro Sánchez, from Spain, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, from Mexico, and Lula, from Brazil. of Massa.
There is another person who knows Fernández well who, however, maintains a third position: “There are many who are saying that Alberto is going to retire from politics. But anyone who says they know what they are going to do is either lying or confused. He hasn’t defined it yet,” he says.
Yes, something clear appears. Everything indicates that he would not return to live in the Puerto Madero apartment, owned by his historic friend Enrique “Pepe” Albistur, where he spent the last years before the presidential move. That decision would not be so much due to a matter of expenses or old nostalgia, but more than anything due to an arithmetic question: there is no way for him to enter there with his collie dog Dylan – who had two puppies since he began living in Olivos -, and with Fabiola Yánez and her Francisco, one and a half years old. The most likely thing, then, is that he will seek new directions.
There is, however, another ambition spinning in Fernández’s head. It is the idea of a belated recognition of his presidency, something that he thinks has not yet been done and that sooner rather than later history will end up recognizing. That is why, they say in his circle, the media silence that he has been maintaining will be broken after the ballot, at which time he will give some interviews again. He will have to hurry: soon he will have to dedicate himself to packing his suitcases to leave the Quinta.
